AuthorTopic: What did we get wrong before? (Read 3835 times)

Now that we have a lot of first impressions of Nocturne and a bit of time to kill before it's fully released, I was wondering what were some of the worst takes in previous sets after previews or early play?

The occasions where you want to open Urchin/Urchin are pretty uncommon, the number where you want to open Urchin/Urchin/Urchin has got be close to zero. You get no economic development that way.

I do agree with you that Mercenary is being underrated here. It's still a great advantage to be the person playing the discard attack most turns. But it's not being underrated by very much. Mercenary is a really awkward card to get into a deck and use effectively, so it's hard to call this a strong card.

Urchin/Merc is crazy good, so unfortunately (if one doesn't like it) a lot of boards require going for it. From a strategy point of view, the simple answer is just "you have to go for Mercenary." The Merc on play effect is incredibly strong the first few times you do it. Trash two cards and probably buy a $5, that's nuts. And of course Urchin's cantripiness, and the Merc trashing means the attacks get played a lot more often, you can be constantly under attack.

Getting Mercenary first is a huge boost, but getting it second usually means you are able to attack longer into the game. In some situations that late attack hurts more. I have lost or nearly lost a lot games by blowing it after getting a huge lead with Merc luck because I didn't account for my opponent attacking me late into the game. It's very easy to green too early once you have a clean Merc deck because you feel way ahead. I would advocate being patient in Mercenary games, take your time and build. This is true of Goons/Militia/Ghost Ship games too.

I don't have any special insights into how to counter it, it's a discard attack so there are the obvious things like draw to X. I think a lot of people forget how good the Lab variants are against discard attacks in general. The best way to beat discarders is to draw your deck. I don't believe much in the fill your deck with ok junk approach to fighting discarders, it's almost always better to try and thin and have 3 really awesome cards in hand.

If you want to ignore Merc entirely, you probably need to wait for a special board: one that doesn't reward deck thinning. Something like Duke maybe.

No one saw Jack of all Trades, Rebuild or Ill Gotten Gains as single card strategies when they first came out. They were first thought to be weak, neutral and useless, respectively, IIRC.

And then it swung to, these are OP single card strategies that are impossible to counter when they are out and are ruining Dominion.

I think only Rebuild got this sort of language applied to it. The advice with the other two was that it was strong, but that there were better things to do depending on the kingdom, and that you had to be on the lookout for them. For Rebuild, the usual piece of advice was (is?) just to mirror.

No one saw Jack of all Trades, Rebuild or Ill Gotten Gains as single card strategies when they first came out. They were first thought to be weak, neutral and useless, respectively, IIRC.

And then it swung to, these are OP single card strategies that are impossible to counter when they are out and are ruining Dominion.

I think only Rebuild got this sort of language applied to it. The advice with the other two was that it was strong, but that there were better things to do depending on the kingdom, and that you had to be on the lookout for them. For Rebuild, the usual piece of advice was (is?) just to mirror.

I seem to remember an article that said something like "IGG shows just how bad a card has to be in order to give a Curse on-gain". It's interesting for me to reflect back on that, because even though I initially thought IGG was good, I totally conformed to that article writer's belief under the assumption that they must know better than me. I eventually came around, but it serves as a personal reminder to take initial opinions with a grain of salt.